BY ERNIE MAILHOT
MIAMI - On September 14 the FBI announced the arrests of 10
Cubans living in southern Florida who it accused of being agents
of the Cuban government. The FBI said two others it wanted to
arrest had left the country.
The charges by the U.S. government against the 10 include working as unregistered agents for a foreign power, conspiracy, and seeking to deliver U.S. military information to a foreign power. They are accused of trying to infiltrate MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, the U.S. Naval Air Station in Boca Chica near Key West, and the U.S. Southern Command, which coordinates U.S. military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean. One member of the group, Antonio Guerrero, had a civilian job at the Boca Chica Naval Air Station. If convicted, they could receive sentences ranging from 15 years to life in prison.
Several of the arrested are also alleged to have infiltrated or tried to infiltrate ultrarightist groups in the Cuban-American community here. René González-Sehweret, one of the arrested, had been the assistant director of "air command" for the Democracia Movement. This organization has organized several anti- Cuba flotillas, at least one of which entered Cuban waters and ended up having one of its boats forcibly turned around by Cuban gunboats. The "air command" attached to the flotillas refers to several small planes piloted by Cuban-American rightists that accompany the flotillas.
Among the other rightist groups the FBI said were targeted for infiltration were Alpha 66, a paramilitary group that trains in the Florida Keys, and Brothers to the Rescue, which organized many provocative flights in Cuban airspace before two of its planes were downed over Cuban waters by the Cuban air force on Feb. 24, 1996.
Ultrarightists on Spanish-language radio stations in Miami and U.S. government officials such as congresspeople Lincoln Díaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen have used the arrests to intensify their ongoing campaign against the Cuban revolution. Referring to the supposed threat to the United States from Cuba, Juan Cortinas, a spokesman for Ros-Lehtinen, said, " Last year we reached an agreement with the State Department that every time a Cuban official would come here, we need to see the paper of where they are going."